I can’t really believe we’re back at this again. I wrote a similar thing 8 (!) years ago when Trump won that election. I wrote it because of Brexit. But we’re here again, so I guess I’m writing this one more time.
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I am a UK citizen, but more than that, I’m an immigrant. Specifically an African immigrant. I was born in South Africa, which has been in the news recently because of Elon complaining that White South Africans who stole land from the Black population are being asked to sell their land.
I should write an aside here – this policy is a terrible implementation and it is being put in place because the SA gov’t is trying to distract from all the other insanely acute problems – the rampant unchecked corruption, the constant electricity shortages, the lack of foreign investment, etc...
...by trying to remind people of Apartheid so they can rekindle their falling support. They seek to remind people that the ANC did the thing that ended Apartheid in 1994, and that was 30 years ago but shut up, they’re doing more now! There’s a whole extra topic there I won’t get into…
To return to my original point, I grew up in SA during Apartheid. I lived through the last years of that terrible time, as the cracks formed and then everything disintegrated. It was a nightmare. I will not detail what happened in Apartheid, please research it for yourself.
But I was instilled from birth with a fierce sense of Wrongness about Apartheid. The word literally means ‘Apartness’ and was a government-level separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ built on colour of skin. As the world slides toward fascism, and ‘otherness’ again becomes a buzzword for everything bad...
...because it’s easy to blame others for your own failings, I am reminded of this time when growing up. We have been here before, and while we are evidently doomed to repeat the Bad Cycle again and again, there is always hope.
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